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Saturday, November 1, 2008

a day of being visionary.

now, this is something i really should have announced earlier but recent events waylaid many of my plans.

today we spent the day as special guests of sideshow, the more-than-a-gift shop at the american visionary art museum. the proprietor, ted frankel, had invited aitor to spend the day there doing unflattering portraits. i was really just tagging along. pictured above are the two tables the staff set up for us - draped with hand painted posters for bollywood movies. ted thought this matched the theme of portraiture. he's he real visionary around there.

now, for those of you doing the math, yes we were celebrating hallowe'en in new york last night. and yes, it is almost a four hour drive. and yes, store open in mornings. we've had no sleep.

in spite of all of this, we did our best to keep ourselves together and had a splendid time. ted is a prince among men and stellar host. we both feel very indebted to his hospitality. an interesting side effect to spending a day doing portraits at a museum is that one gets to interact with visiting tourists from all over. we got to chat with (and aitor got to draw) a visiting professor from little rock, a honeymooning couple and, of course a bunch of the staff at the museum and shop.

i have said it before and i will say it again, you really have to visit sideshow if you are in the baltimore area. they were unpacking thirty boxes of books (my total weakness) when we were there. i showed great restraint in not picking up any of these:

ted seems to have acquired one woman's entire life's collection of craft books dating back to the 1950's. if you are in the baltimore area and are a kindred spirit, i enourage you to pick at least some of these up. they are dirt cheap and i've never seen anything like them. i am just trying to be a touch more minimal in life now. but that doesn't mean you have to be.